French Fridays with Dorie: Gnocchi à la parisienne

I must admit that when I saw the Gnocchis à la parisienne making an appearance on the French Fridays with Dorie calendar, I was both thrilled and a little concerned at the same time. I mean, cheese. Right? Cheese. Always good. But after December’s food fest and Mexico… Ummm… Not sure we needed a big old cheesy dish to polish off between the two of us. Enter the “it should be on every school curriculum across the world” Maths for the Kitchen and voilà, I made 1/3 of the recipe – perfect for a light Sunday lunch with a simple salad.

The gnocchi dough was very similar to the one for Dorie’s pâte à choux that we made for gougères in the first week of FFWD. Dorie suggested leaving the dough for a couple of hours which worked well for me as I baked and cooked my way through a couple of other blog posts last Sunday morning. I was pretty faithful to the recipe, leaving out only the Parmesan to coat the buttered baking dishes as I simply didn’t think that with cheese and béchamel (and gnocchi that would surely expand in our tummies like pierogies do) we needed more cheese. It’s a rare thing that I think we don’t need more cheese…

It was a bit alarming looking in the oven and right away, I knew these would be just as challenging, if not worse, to photograph than the soufflés I made a while back…

So I took the finished dish to the front hall where I lay on the floor to get these shots. Because taking them out into a snowstorm would have deflated the gnocchi for sure…

The scoop? This was fabulous – cheesy and rich without being over the top rich. We had about 8 little gnocchi (that I piped and cut into the boiling water) in each little baking dish and it was the perfect amount for lunch, served with a salad.

Thanks Dorie – this is a great “go to” recipe for a dish that is as tasty as it is visually impressive. Yet so much simpler to make than it looks… Gotta love that!

A few people have asked for recipes from my French Fridays with Dorie entries. The group does not publish the recipes on our blogs, rather, we would prefer it if you would purchase the book yourselves (trust me, you definitely want this book!) which you can do here on Amazon (great price right now) or here on Amazon Canada (it’s also on special!). Go on, treat yourself join us in 2011!

I’m looking forward to getting Dorie’s book. Every recipe I’ve seen attempted on different websites and blogs looks so delicious. This one included!
Though I would probably go for the whole cheese experience. 😉

I have to agree…this might have been a bit too rich for January…but darn was it good! Should have made smaller portions like you did, as I ended up eating leftovers of it all week (just finished the last bit for lunch). Your photos look lovely, even if you did have to lie on the floor! Glad you avoided the cold outdoors!!

I would have made this if I had not hurt my eye – cheese, whole milk, and sauce, I don’t care:) And yes, scaling it down matters:)
LOL! I know what you went through while trying to take a picture of deflating food! But your photo is great!

How bad is this? I’ve spent the past few hours bookmarking recipes I want to try when I get home, am in one of the best foodie cities in the world and am bemoaning the fact that I won’t be able to cook anything from Dorie until MARCH!

Wow, it looks great!! You shouldn’t have had fears about it! I have seen you doing really masterpieces!
What remains a mystery to me is why you say it is so cheesy!! Normally, gnocchi à la parisienne don’t have much cheese on them! it is just a tiny bit sprinkled on it…There is no cheese in the pâte à choux of course…With all my respect for Dorie, I think she deviates from the French original (probably to please the American palate) Much though the French adore cheese, they would not have so much in this dish!

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